RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Bushgate

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the G-man said:
If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson. On "Larry King Live" last month, Woodward was dismissive of the special prosecutor's investigation, suggesting that the original leak was not the result of a "smear campaign" but rather a "kind of gossip, as chatter ... I don't see an underlying crime here."

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r3x29yz4a said:But is ignorance of the law an excuse to break the law?

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WASHINGTON — Watergate sleuth Bob Woodward last night let slip that his "Deep Throat" in the CIA leak case is a man — and the tip that Iraq war critic Joe Wilson had a CIA wife came when they were shooting the breeze.


Woodward — who rocked the CIA probe by revealing he got an early tip about Wilson's wife — said the "casual, offhand" way he was told convinces him that talk of "some vast conspiracy to slime Joe Wilson and his wife," Valerie Plame, is false.

Woodward also stressed that his source said Plame was a CIA "analyst," which meant she wasn't undercover.

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the G-man said:

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r3x29yz4a said:But is ignorance of the law an excuse to break the law?

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Not per se. However, many crimes require an element of "intent."

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But isn't the whole point of Confidential information that it is not supposed to just slip out during gossip.
At the very least (even if you're right about her status, which I've read otherwise) this is negligence in the handling of confidential information.

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the G-man said:
However, if, as noted above, the source didn't realize that the information was confidential, there is an argument to made that the leak was not intentional. Therefore, depending on the language of the statute, the leak would not be a crime.

Again, this assumes that Plame even was a "covert operative" for purposes of the statute which, as noted ad nauseaum, may not even be the case.

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"Remember the investigation and the allegations that people have printed about this story is that there's some vast conspiracy to slime Joe Wilson and his wife, really attack him in an ugly way that is outside the boundaries of hardball. The evidence I had, firsthand, a small piece of the puzzle I acknowledge, is that was not the case." (emphasis added).

(1) The mainstream media hype over Wilson and Plame is simply that. They are creatures who wouldn't exist were the cameras not pointed at them or the editorial pages crying out in their name;
(2) that the supposedly Machiavellian Bush White House was not trying to protect itself from fatal damage by destroying Joe Wilson and avenging itself on his wife; and (3) that someone outside the White House inner circle -- Richard Armitage? some high-ranker at CIA? -- was the source for Woodward and probably Novak as well as part of the CIA and State Department political campaign in opposition to the Iraq war.

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WASHINGTON -- Months before Karl Rove corrected his statements in the Valerie Plame investigation, his lawyer was told that the president's top political adviser might have disclosed Plame's CIA status to a Time magazine reporter.

Rove says he had forgotten the conversation he had on July 11, 2003, with Time's Matt Cooper. But the magazine reported Sunday that in the first half of 2004, as President Bush's re-election campaign was heating up, Rove's lawyer got the word about a possible Rove-Cooper conversation from a second Time reporter, Viveca Novak.
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as President Bush's re-election campaign was heating up, Rove's lawyer got the word about a possible Rove-Cooper conversation from a second Time reporter, Viveca Novak.

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the G-man said:

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as President Bush's re-election campaign was heating up, Rove's lawyer got the word about a possible Rove-Cooper conversation from a second Time reporter, Viveca Novak.

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The fact that someone else, Viveca Novak, remembered the conversation doesn't mean that Rove did.

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Plame's secret life could be easily penetrated with the right computer sleuthing and an understanding of how the CIA's covert employees work.

When the Tribune searched for Plame on an Internet service that sells public information about private individuals to its subscribers, it got a report of more than 7,600 words. Included was the fact that in the early 1990s her address was "AMERICAN EMBASSY ATHENS ST, APO NEW YORK NY 09255." . . .

After the completion of her Athens tour, the CIA reportedly sent Plame to study in Europe. According to her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame was living in Brussels when the couple first met in 1997.

Two years later, when Plame made a $1,000 contribution to Vice President Al Gore, she listed her employer as Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a Boston company apparently set up by the CIA to provide "commercial cover" for some of its operatives.

Brewster-Jennings was not a terribly convincing cover. According to Dun & Bradstreet, the company, created in 1994, is a "legal services office" grossing $60,000 a year and headed by a chief executive named Victor Brewster. Commercial databases accessible by the Tribune contain no indication that such a person exists. . . .

After Plame left her diplomatic post and joined Brewster-Jennings, she became what is known in CIA parlance as an "NOC," shorthand for an intelligence officer working under "non-official cover." But several CIA veterans questioned how someone with an embassy background could have successfully passed herself off as a private-sector consultant with no government connections.

Genuine NOCs, a CIA veteran said, "never use an official address. If she had [a diplomatic] address, her whole cover's completely phony. I used to run NOCs. I was in an embassy. I'd go out and meet them, clandestine meetings. I'd pay them cash to run assets or take trips. I'd give them a big bundle of cash. But they could never use an embassy address, ever."

Another CIA veteran with 20 years of service agreed that "the key is the [embassy] address. That is completely unacceptable for an NOC. She wasn't an NOC, period."

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Patrick Fitzgerald would show real courage if he admitted his mistake and dropped the charges.

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Matter-eater Man said:
Fitzgerald, a Republican who has gone up against mobsters has to adopt the GOP spin to show real courage?

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the G-man said:

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Matter-eater Man said:
Fitzgerald, a Republican who has gone up against mobsters has to adopt the GOP spin to show real courage?

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The Chicago Tribune is "GOP spin"?

No one questionsed Fitzgerald's integrity. I only suggested that he would be showing courage-again-to drop this case if he doesn't have more that we've been seen so far.

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the G-man said:
...former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage...was one of a handful of top officials who had access to the information.

If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson.

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Wonder Boy said:...

But leave it to liberal partisans in Washington, and the news media, to shunt the blame onto Republicans, instead of on Joe Wilson, where it truly belongs.

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Matter-eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:...

But leave it to liberal partisans in Washington, and the news media, to shunt the blame onto Republicans, instead of on Joe Wilson, where it truly belongs.

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So you find Libby and Rove running around leaking classified information to reporters anonymously blameless because Wilson spoke up? I have to ask, do you find their actions honorable. Is this how you want other administrations to act when countering information?

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Wonder Boy said:...

As I said earlier in the topic, that's yet to be proven, that Rove is the leaker.

Libby has been indicted, but again, not yet proven guilty.

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In any case, this is not comparable to leaking missile technology to the Russians or Chinese.

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In the worst case scenario --assuming that Rove and Libby actually did reveal secrets to the media, which is not proven-- even if they did:

1) Joe Wilson already made revelation of Valerie Plame's CIA employment inevitable. His editorial alone, regardless of what Rove, Libby, Armitage, or any other Republican did alone created the spotlight in the Niger mission that would have outed Plame as Wilson's spouse.

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2) again, it is still a source of debate whether she was even a covert agent !

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3) Regardless of whether Valerie Plame was a field agent or not, she is well beyond the number of years after which her covert CIA status can legally be revealed to the public.
For her CIA work to be so many years ago, so far beyond the statute of limitations of being "top secret", makes clear the falseness that her outing allegedly "jeapordizes national security" , as liberals hyperbolically wail.

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and

4) Again, as discussed earlier, Rove's conversation with reporter Robert Novak was just a conversation between two freiends who happen to be Washington insiders, chatting about the latest Beltway gossip.
It was Novak who mentioned to Rove (not Rove passing info to Novak) a rumor that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and had Joseph Wilson recruited by the CIA for the Niger yellow-cake investigation.
Novak said "I heard..."
And Rove responded (neither confirming nor denying the rumor) "Yeah, I heard that too."

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5) Finally, nothing surprises me in Washington.
Well, not too often.
Monica Lewinsky and the semen-stained dress surprised me.

Rove and Libby used what leverage they had politically to spin things in their favor, just like Pelosi, Daschle, Reid, Gore, Hilary, Bill Clinton, Kennedy and the rest all do.

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But it amuses me to see these lifelong anti-war pacifists and leftists wrap themselves in the flag and allege that Rove and the Bush White House defending themselves against Wilson's allegations, that these Republicans-on-the-defensive, and not Wilson himself, are responsible for the spotlight being shined on his wife's CIA role.

I don't see mentioning that Wilson's wife sent him on the Niger mission as the most high-road tactic by Republicans. But it is relevant in spotlighting that Wilson was picked for the Niger mission for reasons other than his qualifications. And also spotlights that perhaps he wasn't the most informed source to write a New York Times editorial accusing President Bush of being a liar.

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I've seen far more sleazy, underhanded, and outright treasonous actions from the Democrat party, and I've highlighted many of them in various topics here.

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I can remember when treason wasn't a term that was hastily & casually thrown out by some Republicans. It was reserved for those that did evil things... like telling our nation's enemies who our spies were.

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But Republican or Democrat, politics is politics. Each time you say: "How DARE they...", I can show you an example where the Democrats have done the same, if not exceeded the alleged underhandedness of Rove and the other conservative puppetmasters. Democrats pull their own strings, and don't always put on a classy show.

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Matter-eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:...

As I said earlier in the topic, that's yet to be proven, that Rove is the leaker.

Libby has been indicted, but again, not yet proven guilty.

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That is a legal determination. I think it's fair to say you don't need a legal determination to make a nonlegal judgement that Libby & Rove lied.

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MAtter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:

In any case, this is not comparable to leaking missile technology to the Russians or Chinese.

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According to the CIA, Plame was a NOC. [You're] making an assumption that she never worked on anything important.

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Matter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:

In the worst case scenario --assuming that Rove and Libby actually did reveal secrets to the media, which is not proven-- even if they did:

1) Joe Wilson already made revelation of Valerie Plame's CIA employment inevitable. His editorial alone, regardless of what Rove, Libby, Armitage, or any other Republican did alone created the spotlight in the Niger mission that would have outed Plame as Wilson's spouse.

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The obvious flaw to your logic there is that if it was truly inevitable, Libby & Rove would never have had to bring it up when speaking to reporters. I actually doubt any reporter would have been able to find out that Plame suggested sending her husband to Niger beyond a gov't official with enough clearence willing to leak classified information.

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Matter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:

2) again, it is still a source of debate whether she was even a covert agent !

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Considering that the CIA & Fitzgerald say she was, I'm not sure what more could be offered.

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Matter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:
3) Regardless of whether Valerie Plame was a field agent or not, she is well beyond the number of years after which her covert CIA status can legally be revealed to the public.
For her CIA work to be so many years ago, so far beyond the statute of limitations of being "top secret", makes clear the falseness that her outing allegedly "jeapordizes national security" , as liberals hyperbolically wail.

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This was posted before & according to the CIA it wasn't true at the time. At this point I'm guessing it's no longer a lie but only because a couple of years have now passed.

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Matter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:
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4) Again, as discussed earlier, Rove's conversation with reporter Robert Novak was just a conversation between two friends who happen to be Washington insiders, chatting about the latest Beltway gossip.
It was Novak who mentioned to Rove (not Rove passing info to Novak) a rumor that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and had Joseph Wilson recruited by the CIA for the Niger yellow-cake investigation.
Novak said "I heard..."
And Rove responded (neither confirming nor denying the rumor) "Yeah, I heard that too."

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Rove had also talked with Cooper where he outed Plame. Novak learned about Plame from Libby. You seem to be picking the one conversation that supports what [you're] saying but ignoring everything else.

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Matter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:
5) Finally, nothing surprises me in Washington.
Well, not too often.
Monica Lewinsky and the semen-stained dress surprised me.

Rove and Libby used what leverage they had politically to spin things in their favor, just like Pelosi, Daschle, Reid, Gore, Hilary, Bill Clinton, Kennedy and the rest all do.

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I'm unaware of any of them running around Washington outing NOC agents to reporters.

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Matter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:
But it amuses me to see these lifelong anti-war pacifists and leftists wrap themselves in the flag and allege that Rove and the Bush White House defending themselves against Wilson's allegations, that these Republicans-on-the-defensive, and not Wilson himself, are responsible for the spotlight being shined on his wife's CIA role.

I don't see mentioning that Wilson's wife sent him on the Niger mission as the most high-road tactic by Republicans. But it is relevant in spotlighting that Wilson was picked for the Niger mission for reasons other than his qualifications. And also spotlights that perhaps he wasn't the most informed source to write a New York Times editorial accusing President Bush of being a liar.

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I never understood how it mattered to partisan Republicans that Plame suggested sending her husband to Niger. The CIA still approved his credentials. The documents still would have been fakes.

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Matter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:
I've seen far more sleazy, underhanded, and outright treasonous actions from the Democrat party, and I've highlighted many of them in various topics here.

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I can remember when treason wasn't a term that was hastily & casually thrown out by some Republicans. It was reserved for those that did evil things... like telling our nation's enemies who our spies were.

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Matter Eater Man said:

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Wonder Boy said:
But Republican or Democrat, politics is politics. Each time you say: "How DARE they...", I can show you an example where the Democrats have done the same, if not exceeded the alleged underhandedness of Rove and the other conservative puppetmasters. Democrats pull their own strings, and don't always put on a classy show.

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If somebody does something wrong, it's not less wrong because you feel somebody else did the same thing.

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Matter-eater Man said:Considering that the CIA & Fitzgerald say she was [a covert operative], I'm not sure what more could be offered

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the G-man said:

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Matter-eater Man said:Considering that the CIA & Fitzgerald say she was [a covert operative], I'm not sure what more could be offered

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That's a little like arguing that just because the cop and the D.A. say you're guilty, you're guilty and we don't need a trial.

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Matter-eater Man said:
This is a bunch of partisans saying no crime was commited after it's been established that there has been.

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This just hit the internet at Raw Story, and TWN has confirmed the essential points through a source close to Rove:

According to several Pentagon sources close to Rove and others familiar with the inquiry, Bush's senior adviser tipped off Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to information that led to the recent "discovery" of 250 pages of missing email from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Rove has been in the crosshairs of Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson for what some believe to be retaliation against her husband, former U.S. Ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson. Wilson had been an ardent critic of pre-war Iraq intelligence.

While these sources did not provide any details regarding what type of arrangements Rove's attorney Robert Luskin may have made with the special prosecutor's office, if any, they were able to provide some information regarding what Rove imparted to Fitzgerald's team. The individuals declined to go on the record out of concern for their jobs.

According to one source close to the case, Rove is providing information on deleted emails, erased hard drives and other types of obstruction by staff and other officials in the Vice President's office. Pentagon sources close to Rove confirmed this account.

None would name the staffers and/or officials whom Rove is providing information about. They did, however, explain that the White House computer system has "real time backup" servers and that while emails were deleted from computers, they were still retrievable from the backup system. By providing the dates and recipient information of the deleted emails, sources say, Rove was able to chart a path for Fitzgerald directly into the office of the Vice President.

Rove giving Patrick Fitzgerald a path into 250 pages of deleted and/or previously unprovided electronic communications from and within the Vice President's office must give serious heartburn to Scooter Libby's defense team, being paid for in part by this cabal of supporters.

Fitzgerald, as I have written before, is setting a high standard for how public officials should conduct themselves.

We have about nine months before the Scooter Libby trial starts. The real question is whether Fitzgerald will widen the pool of those charged with crimes -- and it's still too early to tell.

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Intelligence leak timeline under scrutiny

WASHINGTON - The White House faced a barrage of questions Friday over the timing of President Bush's decision to declassify intelligence that was then leaked to the press by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

In a tense briefing, White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked repeatedly to explain his statement from three years ago that portions of a prewar intelligence document on Iraq were declassified on July 18, 2003.

Ten days earlier, Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis Libby, had leaked snippets of intelligence from the document to New York Times reporter Judith Miller to rebut allegations by Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, Libby told prosecutors, according to documents revealed this week.

Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, said he had passed the information to Miller after being told to do so by Cheney, who advised Libby that Bush had authorized it, said a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

McClellan told reporters July 18, 2003, that the material being released on Iraq ''was officially declassified today.'' On Friday, McClellan interpreted his words to mean that is when the material was ''officially released.''

Asked when it was declassified, McClellan refused to answer, saying the matter was part of Fitzgerald's ongoing CIA leak probe that resulted in Libby's indictment.

Libby faces charges of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI regarding the disclosure that Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, worked for the CIA. He is accused of making false statements about how he learned of her CIA employment and what he told reporters about her.

Plame's CIA employment was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak eight days after her husband, Wilson, accused the Bush administration of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.

The declassification issue marks the second time in the CIA leak probe that the White House's previous public statements have been called into question.

After checking with Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove, McClellan said in 2003 that neither aide was involved in the leak of the CIA identity of Wilson's wife. Rove remains under investigation in the leak probe.

John Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, said, ''Scott McClellan's credibility isn't just in tatters. It is more like confetti.''

Administration critics said Bush's actions were a misuse of the declassification process.

Bush's ''selective declassification of highly sensitive intelligence for political purposes is wrong,'' said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.

Pelosi said a presidential executive order requires a uniform system for classifying, declassifying and safeguarding national security information and asked, ''Why didn't President Bush follow this protocol before authorizing the selective leak of highly sensitive intelligence?''

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., called for a House Intelligence Committee investigation and for the president to explain his actions in person to Congress.

Last year, a commission appointed by Bush to look into the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq cautioned against leaks for political purposes.

''Policymakers who leak intelligence to the press in order to gain political advantage... may do so without fully appreciating the potential harm that can result to sources and methods,'' the commission said.

It said the intelligence community should consider implementing ''a widespread, modern-day equivalent of the 'Loose Lips Sink Ships' campaign to educate individuals about their legal obligations and possible penalties to safeguard intelligence information.''

On Friday, McClellan said there's a difference between providing declassified information when it's in the public interest, and leaking classified information that could jeopardize national security.

''Now, there are Democrats out there that fail to recognize that distinction or refuse to recognize that distinction,'' said McClellan. ''They are simply engaging in crass politics.''

The intelligence Libby was authorized to leak to Miller stated that Iraq was ''vigorously trying to procure'' uranium. Administration officials said in the run-up to the war they were concerned about Iraq building a nuclear weapon.

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Defendant [Libby] testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of
the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate]. Defendant testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then Counsel to the Vice President, whom defendant considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document.

In other words, this was an authorized disclosure of information, the opposite of a leak.

These reports have served as pornography for the Angry Left, which has constructed an elaborate fantasy world around the Plame kerfuffle. In fact, it is nothing more than a battle over procedure.

Libby is seeking to compel the prosecution to turn over certain information to the defense; Fitzgerald is resisting. Among the information Fitzgerald has so far refused to turn over, by the way, are the two facts supposedly at the center of the case: whether Valerie Plame was a covert agent (extensive evidence on the public record comes close to proving that she was not), and who "leaked" Plame's identity to columnist Bob Novak.

More than anything else, the whole kerfuffle is a reflection on the way anti-Bush animus has fed into the adversarial culture of post-Watergate journalism in America. First the New York Times beat the drums for a special prosecutor to investigate who provided accurate information to reporters, albeit supposedly in violation of the law. Among the results: A Times reporter went to jail.

Now we witness the astonishing spectacle of newspapers trying to spin a scandal out of a legal disclosure of information to the press, as if releasing facts means having something to hide.

Maybe we can't expect better from political partisans, but journalists are supposed to stand for the neutral principle of the public's right to know. If they pervert that principle in the pursuit of a partisan program, they will find it harder to assert it when it serves their purposes, whatever those purposes may be.

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...Now we witness the astonishing spectacle of newspapers trying to spin a scandal out of a legal disclosure of information to the press, as if releasing facts means having something to hide.

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...Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading -- portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

The answer is obvious: No. Such a misuse of authority is the very essence of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. It is also precisely the abuse of executive power that led to the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon.

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Matter-eater Man said:
There is quite a long lead in to what I posted from that column G-man. (for those that are interested, give it a read) I would imagine like the Nixon supporters at the time, you see things differently.

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You're a facist! But, I'm sure, like the Nazis in the time of Hitler, you'll deny it.

You're playing such childish rhetorical games. I'm havine more trouble taking you seriously every time you post.

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The latest in a parade of horrors emanating from the Bush administration appeared Thursday in the form of a revelation

On Friday, in a press conference that bore a striking similarity to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?"

the increasingly robotic McClellan said

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